


that’s how we do it in the nein-nein

by Meridas, QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Cops, Developing Friendships, Multi, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, it’s a b99 au folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 21:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16104383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meridas/pseuds/Meridas, https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “This job is eating me alive. I can't breathe anymore. I spent all these years trying to be the good guy, the man in the white hat. I'm not becoming like them. I am them.”“Mollymauk, are you done talking to the camera?”or: the Mighty Nein(-Nine!) catch bad guys and look good doing it. DUN DUN.





	that’s how we do it in the nein-nein

**Author's Note:**

> title is a modified version of Jake’s quote from the pilot: “That’s how we do it in the Nine-Nine, sir: catch bad guys and look good doing it.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the new captain arrives. a bet continues. Nott tries not to get killed. someone gets murdered.

“ This job is eating me alive. I can't breathe anymore. I spent all these years trying to be the good guy, the man in the white hat. I'm not becoming like them. I am them.”

“Mollymauk, are you done talking to the camera?”

Molly turns around. Caleb and the store owner are both staring at him. 

He gestures at all the TV screens. “I’m doing the best speech from Donnie Brasco!” he explains. “In fact,  _ ten _ of me are doing the best speech from Donnie Brasco.” He looks back at the camera and grins. “What’s up?”

Caleb sighs heavily behind him. “Please, get it together.” He turns back to the shop owner. “So, the store was hit about two hours ago…”

Molly spies a keyboard across the room. Caleb can handle the owner, the guy has a photographic memory. He only has that notebook out to fiddle with, and Molly knows who did it, anyway. He slides over to the keyboard. 

This time he gets Caleb’s classic pursed lips and narrowed eyes as a terrible hip-hop beat blares out. Alright, he’ll admit it’s quite loud. He turns it off and grins at Caleb. “Sorry,” he says cheerfully. 

“I’d like a list of all your employees, whoever had access to the store,” Caleb soldiers on. “I’d also like to apologize for my partner, his parents didn’t give him enough attention as a child.”

“Hey, you don’t know that,” Molly objects, wandering back over to the cameras. “ _ I _ don’t even know that, Caleb, don’t make up my childhood for me. Besides, I already solved the case!”

He put his hands on his hips, flinging his coat open dramatically. “Detective, we’re looking for three human males, one of whom has sleeve tats on both arms, although they’re not nearly as nice as mine.”

Caleb raises a challenging eyebrow. “And how do you know that?”

Molly grins. “I had an informant on the inside.” He lowers his voice to a somber tone. “He’s been here for years. Watching, learning. Waiting. His code name?” He grabs the teddy bear and waves it in Caleb’s direction. “Fuzzy Cuddle Bear!” He turns it around. “He’s a nanny-cam!”

His fellow detective scoffs. “You got lucky.”

“Nope,” Molly says cheerfully, “I got here five minutes before you and figured that in this gigantic electronics store, there had to be at least one working camera.” He plugs the nanny cam in and watches his own striking features replaced on ten TV screens, now showing clear images of the robbery. 

He holds the teddy bear up triumphantly. “You did it, Fuzzy. It’s time to come home.” Inspiration strikes him again and he brandishes the bear in Caleb’s face. “ _ I’m not sure if I can, _ ” he growls. “ _ I’ve been undercover so long, I’ve forgotten who I am.”  _ There’s a tiny, reluctant smile trying to break across Caleb’s face. “ _ I have seen terrible things, _ ” Molly continues, waving the bear closer. “ _ I haven’t known the touch of a man in many moons--” _

“All right,” Caleb says abruptly as he turns around and marches out the door. 

“Detective Widogast!” Molly cries, shaking the little bear’s stuffed arms for added effect. “Don’t walk away from me!”

The door is already swinging shut behind Caleb. Molly tosses the teddy bear to the owner and runs after him. 

\--

“I cracked the case!” Molly announces, dropping into a chair right beside Yasha, grinning brightly up at her as he does. Yasha’s hand comes up to pet his hair, avoiding his horns, and he leans closer against her side and turns that bright, smug grin onto Caleb. “Caleb, if you’d do the honors?”

Caleb resists the urge to slam his head into the table. “I hate this,” he mutters, but gets up onto his feet and reluctantly drags himself every step of the way over to the whiteboard. The Bet’s scoreboard, in the corner, very proudly proclaims their scores: Molly’s at 23 cases, and Caleb is at 22. He really, really needs to pick up more cases.

He erases the  _ 23  _ under Molly’s name, and writes, very slowly and in very small numbers,  _ 24 _ . Behind him, he hears Molly’s cheer of, “I’m winning! It’s a good feeling!”

“Enjoy your lead while it lasts,” Caleb mutters to him as he walks past. He slumps down in his seat, next to Nott, who bumps his shoulder in solidarity.

“You’ll get him back,” she says. “You’ll pull ahead and win! I believe in you, Caleb.” She holds out her fist for a fistbump, and Caleb, after a moment, lightly bumps his knuckles against hers. “In the meantime, if you need my help—”

“No,” says Caleb, glaring at Molly, “no, if I win, I want to do it fair and square.”

“Suit yourself,” says Nott, as Fjord gets up now onto the platform, “but the offer’s still on the table.”

“Molly,” says Fjord, “if you’re done basking in your victory,” which Caleb  _ hopes  _ is only temporary, “we need that update on the Brinjay murder.”

“All right, then,” says Molly, springing up to his feet, tail almost knocking over the latest Syphilis Guy’s mug. Syphilis Guy, this time a pale redhead with a bad rash, gives a panicked gasp and grabs hold of his mug as Molly walks past. “So!” says Molly, spinning on his heel and giving a clap. “Good news for all you murder fans: earlier this morning, someone shot and killed luxury food importer Enon Brinjay.”

“Wait, the old guy?” says Nott. “I thought he died of a heart attack already.”

“To borrow a word from Jester,  _ technically _ , yes,” says Molly. “A bullet directly attacked his heart.” He clicks over to the next slide, and says, “I spoke to the cleaning lady who found his body, and using expert detective work I deduced that she had something on her chin that I, personally, think might be butterscotch pudding.”

A chorus of groans and ews erupt from the assembled crowd of detectives as the slide clicks over to pictures of the elderly half-orc, with—oh, okay, that’s. That’s something on her chin. Caleb looks away, because he really doesn’t want to know what that is, and accidentally meets Molly’s gaze instead. Molly smiles at him, a little, head tilting to the side, and Caleb looks away again. Better to look at the pictures than at Molly, right now.

“I think it’s flan!” Nott offers.

“Nott says it’s flan,” Molly says, “Yasha?”

“Old people gunk,” Yasha says.

“Y’all,” sighs Fjord, “we got a murder to solve here, let’s save the case of what the hell’s on the cleaning lady’s face for when we’ve collared the guy.”

“The crime techs are at the scene,” says Caleb, “we’ll be headed back when they’ve finished.”

“I want everyone on this case,” says Fjord, tapping the side of the podium just as they’ve all started to rise, “it’s gonna be priority one for the new captain. She’ll be coming by shortly, far as I know, and I need everyone on their best behavior—which means,  _ Nott _ , that you can’t lift anything from the crime scene.”

“I haven’t done that in three weeks!” Nott says, throwing her hands up. A small pocket watch falls to the ground from the motion of her hoodie, and she coughs. “Uh, that one was from the criminal Caleb and I collared.”

“He stole that too, you realize?” says Molly.

“Hey,” says Yasha, pulling on her leather jacket, “you’ve worked with her before, what’s the new captain like?”

“Captain Beauregard?” says Fjord. “She’ll want to introduce herself.”

\--

“Hey,” Caleb says, leaning over his desk. “Have you heard anything about the new captain?”

Molly wrinkles his nose. “No, and I don’t care.” He sighs. “I wish Captain Keyleth never left, she was the best.” 

“She was terrible!” Caleb argues. “Sweet, but terrible. You just liked her because she let you do whatever you wanted!”

Molly grins, recalling that time with the fire extinguisher roller chair derby. “Yeah, what’s your point? We got work done, and she was fun!”

Caleb sighs and crosses his arms. “If I am ever going to make Captain, I need an actual mentor. Keyleth was very charming, but I learned absolutely nothing from her.”

“Sorry, dear,” Molly shrugs. “But this new captain is gonna be another washed-up pencil pusher who’s only concerned with  _ following every rule in the patrol guide _ .” He even decides to make the corresponding robot voice and jerky hand motions. Maybe he can get one little smile out of Caleb before the new CO gets here and stresses him out even more. “ _ Meep morp _ ,” he chirps, playing it up. “ _ Zeep. Robot Captain, engage--” _

“Tell me what you really think, Detective.” 

Molly jumps out of his chair. “Hey!” he blurts out. “Hello. New Captain alert!” He’s very cool, he can salvage this. She probably didn’t even hear all of that. “You must be the new CO, I’m Detective Mollymauk Tealeaf--”

“No,” the Captain drawls, raising one eyebrow at him. “Don’t let me interrupt, you were on a roll there. Describing what kind of person I’m gonna be.” She stares right at him. “Go ahead and finish.”

She could not be more different from Captain Keyleth’s open, happy expressions if she tried. Molly clears his throat. “Well, I’m sure that’s not necessary, it’s just a…” That one eyebrow is creeping higher. Nothing else on her face moves. It’s actually quite impressive. “Or I could recap, very quickly, sure, why not.”

He glances around the precinct. Caleb is smiling now, the bastard. Nott has apparently taken cover because she’s not causing convenient trouble anywhere, and Yasha is definitely hiding a smile behind her hand. Jester appears to be filming him on her phone while Fjord is facepalming behind the new Captain’s back. Useless, all of them. 

“I was saying something about a washed-up pencil pusher.” Molly decides to own it. She definitely heard it all earlier. “There was an adorable robot impression in there, somewhere, right Caleb?  _ Meep morp _ ,” he tries desperately. Holy shit, has she even blinked yet? “ _ Zarp, _ ” he finishes, and he doesn’t need to see Yasha joining the facepalm to know that fell flat. He ignores her. She’s no help whatsoever, he’s owning the awful robot voice, it’s his now.

“Wow,” the new Captain says finally. “That’s a terrible robot voice.”

He nods briskly. “Thanks, I’ll workshop it.”

“You do that. And next time I see you, you’d better be wearing a shirt that buttons all the way up, and a tie.”

Molly glances down and frowns. His shirt is actually very fashionable today. “Um, actually the old Captain didn’t care what we wore.”

“Well, your new Captain does,” she snaps, “and it’s also a direct order.” She breezes past him toward her office. “Listen up,” she says, piercing eyes sweeping the bullpen. “I’m your new commanding officer, Beauregard Lionett.”

“Speech!” Caleb calls out.

“That... was my speech.”

“Ah.” Caleb sinks back into his chair. “Short and sweet, okay.”

Captain Beauregard nods at Fjord. “Sergeant, a word.”

\--

“Listen, Fjord,” says Beau, setting the nameplate down on the desk and kicking the chair out so she can slump down in it, because fuck, it’s been way too long a day and she’s been professional too damn long, “we’ve been through some shit together, so I’m—kinda glad you’re here. If on a desk job.” She looks up at Fjord and huffs out a breath. “How’d you end up on a desk job? You’re the least likely person for one.”

“Yeah, ‘bout that,” says Fjord, rubbing the back of his neck. “So you know how Vandrin and his best friend got married last year?”

“Yeah,” says Beau. She’s not quite sure what Fjord’s adoptive father and his husband’s marriage has to do with this, honestly, but she’s willing to see this through.

“You know they adopted five-year-old twins four months ago?” He pulls his wallet out, and shows a picture of the five of them: Vandrin, his husband, Fjord, and the twins, a red-skinned tiefling and an aasimar with pure white hair. “That’s Matilda,” he says, pointing to the tiefling, “and her twin’s Crizelda.”

Beau snaps her fingers. “Yeah, the tiefling and the aasimar,” she says. “Heard that through the grapevine. They got real adorable chubby cheeks, man.”

“I, uh,” says Fjord, before he coughs and rocks back onto his heels. God, he’s nervous. “Well. It’s kinda—I’ve been thinking a lot more, recently, ‘bout how they’re just kids, and I’m their big brother now, and Vandrin and his partner are doing their best but, y’know, what if their time runs out? I gotta be there for these kids, make sure they’re gonna do all right, make sure I’m doing right by them, and sure as hell I can’t do that if I go down in the line of duty.” He sighs. “And that’s when I lost my edge.”

“Still look pretty edgy to me,” says Beau.

“Oh, no,” says Fjord. “There was—an incident, in a department store, two months back.”

\--

Molly crouches behind a rack of tacky clothes, red eyes flicking longingly towards them for a moment before he looks back at Fjord. “You all right there, Sarge?” he whispers. “You’re looking a little jumpy.”

“I’m fine,” Fjord mutters, trying to calm his racing heart. Breathe, breathe, breathe. “I’m fine,” he says.

Molly raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow.

Something, off in the distance, crashes.

Fjord jumps out of cover, screaming, and squeezes the trigger once, twice, three times before the—the mannequin collapses, because there wasn’t anybody  _ there _ , apparently. The head pops off on impact for good measure, and rolls up to Molly’s foot.

Molly stares down at the head, then up at Fjord. “Well,” he says, cheerfully, kicking the head up onto his foot and balancing it on the toe of his shoe like a football, “you killed him  _ good _ .”

\--

“And I’m still not right,” says Fjord, with a wince, as he finishes recounting the story.

Beau stares up at him, then lets out a long sigh. Yeah, that’s definitely going to be something she’ll need to sort out, Fjord’s one of the best cops she knows. She needs him back on the squad as soon as possible, but for now she could use his advice. She stands up, and says, “Tell me about your detectives. I met a couple of them just now,” like the  _ fucking  _ asshole tiefling out there, and oh, Yasha, too, Yasha with the eyes and the smile and the hair, “but I wanna hear about them from you. You know them better than I do.”

She opens the blinds just enough for the two of them to see the precinct beyond her office. Fjord leans back on the desk and says, “First off, the Syphilis Guys.” He waves a hand at the redhead and his other friend, some drow elf with a bad mullet. “They’re pretty much useless. There’s a lot of them around and a little while back they fell for the rumor we had syphilis around here, so now we just call ‘em Syphilis Guys. They make  _ great  _ coffee, though.”

Beau makes a face. “I’m not touching their coffee,” she says.

“Yeah, you and Yasha both,” Fjord says, and Beau does not blush at the mention of Yasha’s name. “Speaking of Yasha: she’s tough, smart, hard to read, and sometimes? Kinda scary.”

Beau folds her arms across her chest. The fabric of her shirt slides over the hickey below her collar, where Yasha kissed her just yesterday night, to celebrate her promotion. “How scary?” she asks, keeping her tone level.

\--

“Like fuck,” says the half-elf thug, draping himself over the chair like he’s on a couch at home and not a plastic chair in a police precinct, “am I gonna tell you cops  _ shit _ . I know my rights, buddy.”

Fjord lets out a breath. “Well,” he says, tiredly, “I tried being nice. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He steps towards the door, gives a knock, and says, “Yasha?”

Yasha, fresh from her mountain trip, walks in picking twigs out of her hair, and says, “Hello.”

The half-elf’s eyebrow arcs up as Fjord steps out of the room. “Aw, cute. Hey, sweetheart, did the big bad cop think you could scare me?” he says, almost jeering, and Fjord chuckles to himself as he heads into the other room and stays a safe ten feet back.

Yasha stares down at the half-elf.

Then the whole room begins to dim.

Then her eyes turn jet-black, and her hair turns as black as the night sky, and skeletal wings unfurl from under her leather jacket, and she  _ floats an inch off the ground _ .

Then she opens her mouth and says, in the voices of a hundred, a thousand wronged and vengeful souls clamoring for justice, as the half-elf’s chair scrapes back and his eyes grow wide with primal terror, “Say  _ sweetheart  _ again, I fucking dare you.”

The half-elf screams, “ _ Oh Jesus Christ let me out of here _ !”

\--

God, that sounds so hot.

Beau blinks, and glances at Fjord, who’s pointing now at the goblin detective, sending paper airplanes flying over to the blue tiefling woman—the civilian secretary, apparently.

“The goblin’s Nott the Brave,” he says. “No comma, as she insists.”

“That’s not a real name,” says Beau. “That’s a pun.”

“Yeah, Nott’s a punster,” says Fjord, dryly. “She’s also got the stickiest fingers on this team, but she’s a grinder. Once she sets her mind on a goal, or on cracking a case, she won’t stop till she’s finished.” He pauses, then adds, “One of her goals is to get Caleb over there to stop being so hard on himself, so you’ll see them together a lot. So far she’s made some progress.”

“Okay,” says Beau, “what else about her?”

“She’s drunk all the time,” says Fjord. “Hell, she drinks before raids. Somehow she’s a lot more effective then.”

“What?”

\--

“I don’t  _ like this _ ,” says Nott, tremulously, as she, Caleb and Yasha peer into the depths of the drug den that they’re about to bust. “I don’t like this at  _ all _ .” Her hand slips into her hoodie as she looks up at the keypad.

“I’ll go in first,” says Yasha. “I’m tough, I can take the hits.”

“You’d have to get past the lock first,” says Caleb, worriedly, looking at the keypad and digging his spellbook out of his pocket, “I have a spell left, I can perhaps try my hand at this—”

“Lemme do it,” Nott slurs from down below, having unscrewed the cap of her flask and chugged enough of it to get truly, thoroughly drunk. “‘S’my job! ‘M’gonna pick the  _ fuck  _ outta this lock, just pick me up so I can reach!”

Yasha looks at Caleb, who sighs, puts his arms around Nott’s armpits, and lifts her up to the keypad. She pulls her phone out, fumbles a little with it and the wire, and then starts typing away on her phone.

The keypad dings, and the door slides open.

“Ha!” screams Nott, just as an arrow comes shooting out from the keypad and hits her right in the shoulder. “ _ Ow _ !”

\--

“Huh,” says Beau, full of respect.

“Yeah,” says Fjord, with a sigh. He nods towards Caleb, downing a cup of coffee with the look of a man on a mission, eyes trained on his laptop screen. “Caleb Widogast. He’s a wizard, and he used to be on the fast track to Sergeant in one of the precincts on the Upper East Side.”

“So how’d he end up here?” says Beau.

“That mess with Captain Ikithon, is how,” says Fjord, and Beau shudders, tugs her jacket closer around herself. Old white men in positions of power, that’s a disease they could all do without. “He’s better now, though, even if he’s still got some issues left over. And he’s got a photographic memory, which comes in useful a lot. Only—he can be a little bit of a mess, in social situations.”

“Yeah, me too,” says Beau. “So?”

“This is a different flavor,” says Fjord.

\--

“ _ Ja _ , my name is Ophelia Mardun,” says the tiefling woman, the blood-red color of her dress standing out against her gray skin and, also, the cuffs. “And you are,” she continues, raking her eyes over Caleb, “a surprise. I don’t meet a lot of people from Germany.” She leans forward. “Are you free on Friday night, by any chance?”

Caleb coughs, and sinks deeper into his chair. “ _ Ja _ , uh, neither do I, but I migrated here when I was ten, I have not been back to Germany in years, not since my grandmother passed on so long ago, and I do not wish to go back because so much has changed and I am not the wide-eyed young boy I was when I left,” he says, all in a rush. “I am more of a New Yorker than anything else now, I think, and, uh, I need you to sign these please because I just realized that I very much need to go my cat might’ve gotten into the larder and he is a very hungry cat,  _ very  _ hungry, so uh actually do you know what,  _ Mollymauk _ !”

“Yeah, dear?” says Molly, poking his bedazzled, horned head up from his nap. “Not so loud, if you please.”

Caleb thrusts the files at him, then grabs his bag and his coat. “I need to go,” he babbles, “Frumpkin is possibly worried about me right now, or he has gotten into the larder and he’ll be getting very fat and I need to go check up on him right now it’s very urgent please can you process Fraulein Mardun here for me I need to go goodbye Mollymauk it’s been a pleasure!”

Molly blinks blearily at Caleb, watching him go with the bemused look of the freshly-awakened, then looks at Mardun. “What did you do to him?” he asks.

\--

“He’s got a bet going right now with Mollymauk Tealeaf,” says Fjord, nodding to That Fucking Tiefling Asshole. Yeah. That one. With the peacock feathers and the smug-ass grin and the fucking  _ coat  _ that makes her eyes hurt. “Ever since they started it, their numbers have gone way up.”

“Tell me about Tealeaf,” says Beau.

“Molly,” Fjord sighs, “might be one of the best detectives in this precinct. He’s a very observant guy and thinks outside of the box, and really likes catching bad guys. He’s just, uh.” He coughs, then starts counting something out on his fingers. “He’s only really been  _ Molly _ for, hm, eight, eight and a half years?”

“Wait, wait, back up,” says Beau, turning to Fjord, “whaddaya mean he’s only been Molly for eight years? Eight and a half?”

“He’s got severe retrograde amnesia,” says Fjord. “Can’t remember shit about his life before he hit nineteen. Sometimes he acts like he’s the twenty-seven-year-old his records say he is, and sometimes—”

Outside the office, Molly crumples up a paper into a ball. He tosses it towards the blue tiefling, who catches it out of the air, uncrumples it, and grins at him. Then she scribbles something down, throws it back, and he clambers up onto his chair to catch it. In no time at all, the two of them have somehow gotten a game going, with rules that Beau can barely understand from just observing them.

Seriously, the blue tiefling just shrieked something at Molly and made  _ ice _ happen, what the hell.

The paper ball smacks Molly in the face, and he collapses onto his chair with a laugh.

Beau lets out a long, slow breath.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” she says, staring at the precinct. That she’s supposed to captain. That she’s been dreaming of even just being a part of for so damn long. She looks sideways at Fjord. “Can you help?”

Fjord nods. “Of course,” he says. “Anything you need, Beau. Where do you wanna start?”

\--

“Okay,” Molly says, stretching his arms out until his shoulders give a satisfying  _ pop _ . “So, the perp came in through the window, left a muddy red footprint, and apparently had a tryst with the dish rack on the way out.” He shakes his head sadly. “And never even called back.”

“Shell casings were found over here,” Caleb talks right over his theatrics. “Two shots.” He puts up his hand and makes a finger gun. “ _ Bang, bang. _ ” 

Molly has to cover up the embarrassing grin he has at Caleb’s little affectation. He clears his throat and reaches into the deep pockets of his coat. “Excellent work, Detective. You get a tie!” 

He tosses it -- gently, but Caleb still flails at it and knocks it to the ground. “What?” He looks at the tie, looks back at Molly. “Why do you have ties in your pockets?”

“I didn’t know you owned a tie,” Nott mutters from the kitchen. 

“Excuse you, I’m very fashionable,” Molly protests. 

Caleb picks up the tie with the end of his pen. “Did you take this from the evidence locker?”

“No, I think actually it belongs to Syphilis Guy,” Yasha comments over his shoulder. Caleb immediately drops it again. 

“Good solve, Yasha! Tie for you!” Molly tosses another one at her.

“How many of those did you take?”

Molly ignores that question. “I’ve brought them with me, Mr. Caleb, because it’s impossible to solve crimes unless you’re wearing a tie, so you’d better put it on!”

Caleb does not pick up the tie. “You should really not antagonize Captain Beauregard,” he chides. “She is going to be my responsible adult.”

“Okay, first of all,” Molly says, “you realize that sounds like one of your smutty novels, and it’s unfair to remind me of those in the workplace--” Caleb sputters in protest and Molly rolls right on, “--and secondly, your ‘responsible adult’ is a pain in my ass, and not in the fun way.”

Yasha makes a choking sound. Molly glances over in concern. “Everything okay in there, Yash?” 

She clears her throat. “Fine. Yep. Fine.” She ducks her head to her notepad. “Okay, so, um, I have a list of stuff the guy took, and…” she clears her throat again. “Um, it looks like he stole a computer, a watch, and a…” she frowns at her own handwriting. “A… ham? Can that be right? This says it’s valued at six  _ thousand  _ gold pieces?”

Molly considers this. “People pay a lot for weirder, I guess.” 

“Jester would know about this,” Yasha mutters, taking out her phone. 

“Well, somebody better contact Captain Beauregard,” Molly says, “let her know we’ve got a ten-tie situation!”

“Speaking of ties, where’s yours, Meep Morp?”

Molly freezes. He meets Caleb’s eyes in front of him. Those eyebrows are definitely laughing at Molly’s misfortune. Yep, it’s the Captain. “This is fantastic,” he mutters under his breath. 

He whirls around. “Captain! Welcome to the murder!” He spreads his hands theatrically. “What are you doing here?”

“I like to know things,” Beauregard says, stepping further into the room and looking him up and down. “Including what my detectives are up to. That okay by you?”

Molly is overcome with the desire to shave that one eyebrow off her face while she sleeps. 

_ Be professional, Tealeaf. Be… sort of professional.  _

“Yep,” he manages. “Yep, sure.”

“Take Caleb and go knock on some doors,” she orders.

“Door duty?” Molly whines. “That’s a waste of time!”

Captain Beauregard ignores him. How rude. “Yasha, you take Nott and go check with the coroner. Report back to me in one hour.”

She nods at them -- still ignoring Molly -- and then turns and heads out of the room. 

Molly sighs gustily. “Well, that went well.”

“No, it didn’t!” the Captain’s voice carries back from the door. 

Molly closes his eyes briefly. Yasha is definitely laughing at him. He waits another second to let the Captain get farther away. “She’s got like, magic hearing.”

Caleb pats his shoulder condescendingly as he brushes by. “Come on, then, Meep Morp.”

Molly perks up immediately. “Did you just make a joke? Caleb, are you making jokes now?” He’s still walking away. “Caleb, don’t you dare interview the weirdos without me!”

\--

Beau tosses her jacket over the back of her office chair. “Okay, so Jester,” she begins. “Civilian administrators like you usually have an ear to the ground around here.” She settles down into her chair and leans forward on her elbows. Part of her is trying really hard not to just ask this girl straight up for all the office gossip. This bunch of weirdos, she’s sure so many of them have weird secrets and the asshole kid in Beau wants to know  _ all of them so bad _ . But she’s a Captain now. Gotta act like it. 

“What do Caleb and Tealeaf have riding on this bet of theirs?” she asks instead. 

“Okay, I’m happy to tell you all about it,” Jester says. “I just have, like, six things that I want that I think you should let me do if I tell you, which is, you should let me use your office for when I want to talk to the Traveler, and you let me keep all my donuts in your safe so that the Syphilis Guy stops eating them but I can come in here and get them whenever I want, and--”

“How about this,” Beau cuts her off. “You tell me--” Jester nods emphatically, ribbons and curls bouncing-- “and in return, I won’t have you suspended without pay.”

“Okay, that sounds super!” She’s utterly unfazed by Beau’s threat. She kinda likes this girl. “So, what’s going to happen is, if Caleb gets more arrests then he gets to take Molly’s car, which is this  _ super adorable _ little Beetle that is, like, all customized and Molly has made out with  _ so many people _ in it.”

She bets he has. Beau can feel her eye twitching just a little bit. 

“ _ But _ , if  _ Molly  _ gets more arrests,” Jester leans in toward Beau, grinning. “Then  _ Caleb  _ has to go on a  _ date _ with him!”

Beau raised her eyebrows. “That’s… okay, I wasn’t expecting that.”

Jester sits back primly and nods. “Molly guarantees it will end in sex,” she says matter-of-factly, and Beau sees her career flash before her eyes. “I bet on, like, at least a little bit of over-the-clothes, you know, a little bit of action--”

“Jester,” Beau grits out.  _ It’s worth it, you’re Captain, it’s worth it, don’t think about Tealeaf, don’t smash your head on the desk, don’t think about it-- _

“Some caresses, you know, I can see Molly showing up in a silk robe, so--”

“Gah,” Beau blurts out, standing up abruptly. “Uh, thank you, Jester! Thank you, that’s, yep, that’s good, that’s enough. Thank you.”

“Okay!” Jester says brightly. She hops up and smooths out her skirt. “You let me know if you want to know anything else, Captain Beau, I’m really good at knowing things and also at sneaking, so if you ever need to know anything you just come find me!”

She leaves the office in a cloud of cotton candy scent. Beau stares after her. 

She sits back down. “You’re the Captain,” she whispers to herself. 

She drops her head on the desk. 

\--

“Let the wasting of time begin,” Molly mutters, tail flicking about in a frustrated manner as he and Caleb walk up to the first door. Fuck door duty, really, all that happens is that he has to talk to fifty different people and take down fifty conflicting statements that’ll get dismissed by the end of the day because they’re all, again,  _ conflicting _ . At the very least, though, Caleb’s just behind him, and if there’s anyone who hates door duty more than Molly does, it’s probably Caleb. Social interactions are just not his jam.

That’s fine, they’re Molly’s, and Molly is a pro at social interactions. So when he knocks on the first door, he summons up a smile, and ignores the hell out of the weed smell that’s seeping through the cracks.

People these days are so bad at hiding their weed from the cops. Molly’s almost tempted to lecture them over how to hide the weed smell from the police officer knocking on their door. Then he remembers that as a police officer, he can’t actually do that, so he settles for just giving his most charming smile to the half-orc college student who opens the door.

“ _ Guten Nachmittag _ , sir,” says Caleb, beating Molly to the punch. “May we ask you a few questions?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” says the half-orc, a guy with slightly bloodshot eyes, leaning against the doorway. Molly tilts his head, and sees a human woman with COLUMBIA U emblazoned on her sweatshirt and a somewhat androgynous water genasi napping together on the couch. “Actually, I’m glad you guys are here, because you can smell that, right?”

“The weed smell?” says Molly. There’s no way he can’t smell it. It’s fucking everywhere from this apartment. Seriously, these people have got to invest in some incense. “Yes.”

“Because a dude broke in, smoked weed, and then just—bolted.”

Molly has never been so glad for the fact that his eyes are just a solid red, no pupils, because then that means this half-orc hasn’t noticed him glancing at Caleb and raising an eyebrow at him. Really? Really, that’s the excuse they’re going with? Moonweaver help these poor dumb idiots.

“Would this be the same person who left that bong there on the floor?” he says, nodding towards the impressively painted bong.

“Totally!” calls the water genasi.

Caleb drops his face into his hands.

\--

“Police!” calls Molly, knocking on door 3C.

“Just a moment!” screams a voice.

The door cracks open after a minute, and a soot-stained face grins wildly up at Molly. He’s very old, his hair sticking up every which way, and his teeth are stained with black. His glasses are askew, held together by spit and more masking tape than Molly has on his desk, and he says, in a high-pitched voice, “Yes? What is it? Can I help you with your inquiries or are you here for black powder like the other one was?”

“Uh,” says Caleb, uncertain, clutching his notepad close to his chest. “ _ Nnnnnein _ ?”

Molly grins back at the guy. “Oh, no!” he says, quite cheerful. “No, we’re from the NYPD, we’re here to investigate a murder.”

“Ahhh, yes!” says the guy. “Nothing here! Didn’t hear anything. Bit deaf, y’see.” He grins again, and ohhhh-kay this guy is a little bit weirder than what Molly usually gets on door duty. And he gets a lot of weird on door duty. Hell, he’s a lot of weird himself. “But if you can come inside I have something the two of you’re sure to like! You!” He points at Caleb. “You look like a  _ connoisseur _ .”

“Uh, no, that would be Mollymauk here,” says Caleb, quickly, backing slightly away.

“I do like new experiences,” Molly says with a grin. “What do you have to offer, stranger? And what  _ is  _ your name?”

“I bake pies!” says the man. “ _ Special _ pies! And it’s Victor!”

Caleb scribbles something down on the notebook and whispers, “Stay on track.”

Ooh, cool, weed pies. “I’d love to see them,” says Molly, truthfully. “But first can you help us?” He pulls Brinjay’s photo out of his pocket and says, “Have you ever seen this man before? He was shot last night in this very building.”

Victor squints at the photo, then, quick as a flash, his hand—which isn’t actually a hand, but a metal claw—yanks it out of Molly’s hand. “Be right back!” he shrieks, and the door slams shut so hard that something falls off a shelf from the inside from the force of it. A moment later, Molly hears a very loud explosion.

“...should we go check on him?” says Caleb.

Molly knocks on the door again, and says, “Uh, hello? Victor? NYPD, we’d like our photo back.”

The door opens again, and Victor shrieks, “ **_Come back later_ ** !” so loudly, in Molly’s face, that he’s pretty sure the guy might’ve actually ruptured an eardrum. Then the door slams shut, and there’s another small but loud explosion.

“We should take that suggestion,” says Caleb.

“Agreed,” says Molly. “What’s next?”

\--

Caleb prods the magazines on the doorstep of 5F, and says, “Magazines on theology and the Everlight’s role in the Information Age on the doormat, top floor apartment in Brooklyn—I’ve a feeling whoever’s in this apartment may be a very rich young cleric in training at the temple of Sarenrae in the Upper East Side.”

“How sure are you?” says Molly. “Would it be twenty gold sure?”

“Thirty gold,” says Caleb.

Molly hums. Well, he does have some money left over. “I’ll take that bet, but I want a dinner at Eleven Madison Park instead if I win,” he says, and knocks on the door of the apartment. “NYPD! Open up, please!”

The man who opens the door is not, in fact, a rich young cleric. Instead, he’s a doddering old gnome, with long silver hair and a bald spot on top of his head, his glasses making his blue eyes even bigger than they usually are. The symbol of the Everlight hangs around his neck, and he blinks up at Molly and Caleb. “Uh, hello?” he says.

Molly laughs, and says, “Afternoon, sir! How are you today? My name is Detective Right All The Time—”

“ _ Verdammt _ ,” Caleb says, towards the ceiling.

“And this is my partner, Detective Terrible Detective,” says Molly. “We’re heading to a very fancy restaurant after this, so I’ll make this very fast—”

“Oh, congratulations,” says the gnome.

“We are  _ not  _ dating,” says Caleb, still not looking at the gnome.

“Sure you’re not,” says the gnome. “Pike said the same thing, and now she and that bard of hers are married.” He taps some gnarled fingers against his symbol of the Everlight, and says, “But enough about that, what was it you were knocking on my door for?”

\--

“No surprises from the coroner,” Yasha reports, “a few gunshots, shoulder and chest, just like we thought.”

“None of the neighbors heard or saw anything,” Molly adds, “and what’s worse, Caleb struck out with a three-hundred-year-old.”

“That is not accurate, Captain,” Caleb interjects. 

Molly gasps. “Wait, you hooked up with him? Caleb, I never thought!”

Caleb glares daggers at him. 

“All right,” Beau overrides them. “Get back out there, you hooligans. Go hit the pawn shops and canvass the neighborhood. And you--” she points at Molly. “Buy yourself a damn tie while you’re out there. It should be exactly one color, and no patterns.”

“Oh, believe it or not, Captain, I’m actually wearing a tie right now!” Molly lifts his shirt up triumphantly. “Check it out. Secret tie!” He’s not a hundred percent sure whose tie it is, but he has it narrowed down to three possibilities and all of them left his car very happy, so he doubts they’re cut up about a missing tie.

Beauregard stares him down. “First of all, you’re kind of overdoing it with the manscaping, there,” she says. “But more importantly, Tealeaf, why are you refusing to take my orders seriously?” 

She looks around at each of them. “Do any of you know why it’s important to me that you dress appropriately? Act a little bit like you’re taking your jobs seriously? Anyone?”

Molly slowly lowers his shirt back down. Yasha coughs into her fist. 

“Hm.” Beau raises her judgey eyebrow again. “Four highly trained detectives, and none of you want to take a crack at this simple mystery?” She crosses her arms. “I want to be briefed on any new developments. Any questions?”

Molly raises his hand. “I was gonna ask if you thought I was doing too much manscaping, but we solved that one, so I’m good.”

She turns and stalks back into her office. Molly sidles up to Jester’s desk immediately. 

“Hey, Jester,” he says, “there’s this fancy ham stuff related to the case, do you know what Jamon Iberico is?”

“Oh yeah, that stuff is great!” Jester says. “You guys have had it at my mom’s house before!”

Molly blinks at her. “Isn’t this stuff worth like-- you know what, nevermind, it’s Aunt Marian. Well, the perp left a really expensive TV but took this ham, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Is there a place near the crime scene that sells it, maybe?”

“I can check in like, two seconds!” Jester taps eagerly at her phone. “Yeah! There’s a place called Fassbender’s that has it and it’s super close!”

“Thank you, dear, you’re the best!” Molly leans over her desk and drops a kiss on her forehead. “Yasha, let’s go!”

“We’ve got to brief the CO,” Yasha points out. 

Molly whirls his coat over his shoulders. “We’ll brief her after we catch the guy! Come on!”

\--

Nott watches the two go, Molly in a cloud of glitter and the distinct scent of nag champa, Yasha in a cloud of Suspicious Xhorhasian Scents. Captain Beau’s already stalked back into her office, but she’s opened a little gap in the blinds to watch Yasha go. Specifically Yasha’s butt. Yeah, she’s definitely gay, Nott’s kind of surprised nobody else has noticed so far.

She looks at Jester, who meets her gaze and nods. Okay, maybe  _ Jester’s _ noticed.

She turns to Caleb, about to talk to him, but—nope. He’s neck-deep in files now. She’s not going to get anywhere while he’s working through paperwork, so instead she rolls her chair over to Jester’s desk.

“Jester!” she hisses.

“Hi, Nott!” says Jester, leaning forward, tail perking up. “Did you change your mind about the Rihanna concert and the best pie in NY search after? We could still go together, it’s only two weeks from now! Molly’s perfect for Rihanna, but he lives off of takeout and instant ramen, his tastes are irredeemably fucked.”

“No, I still don’t like her, but thanks for thinking of me and my tastes,” says Nott, deciding not to tell her that she might’ve, uh, eaten Algernon again. “No, listen, this is about  _ Yasha _ .”

Jester sighs. “She isn’t a Xhorhasian spy and she’s not gonna kill you in your sleep, Nott,” she says, grabbing a donut from her neon pink haversack. Nott’s pretty sure she’s had it enchanted to be bigger on the inside just to stuff more food into it than before.

“You don’t know that!” Nott says, voice climbing higher. “Nobody knows that! Nobody knows where she  _ lives _ , not even Molly, and he’s her best friend! She’s so secretive, Jester, it’s scary! She’s scary! Plus she goes on so many mountain trips, but what if they’re really trips to meet with other Xhorhasian spies?!”

“No, they’re definitely mountain trips,” says Jester. “Pilgrimages to the Storm Lord, actually. I came along with her one time, remember, when we were younger and she was just getting into it?” She winces, and mutters, “It was so bad, I couldn’t get  _ any  _ reception.”

“She could’ve been covering that time ‘cause she knew you would get suspicious,” says Nott.

Jester bites into her donut, munching thoughtfully. “Mm, you have a point,” she says. “The Traveler likes her, though. He says she’s super cool for someone who follows the  _ Storm Lord _ .”

Honestly Nott doesn’t exactly trust the Traveler either, but then she’s suspicious of religion in general, organized or  _ dis _ organized. Besides, Jester adores the guy, even if as gods go he’s kinda weird, so she doesn’t comment.

“Anyway, you guys have been working together for like years now,” says Jester. “Plus she got you that gift for Secret Non-Denominational Holiday Spirit.”

\--

Nott rips the wrapping from her gift, and stares down at—

“Is this a threat?” she asks, holding the dagger up and swinging it. Syphilis Guy to her right, a blonde half-elf this week, shrieks and backs away from her.

“Um, no?” says Yasha, holding her gift, a cat-patterned scarf from Caleb. She wraps it around her neck, somewhat bemused. “It’s a gift. It was very shiny, I thought you might like it?”

Nott pauses. “Yes,” she admits. “I like it. It’s mine now.” She points the dagger at Yasha and shrieks, “But I’m checking for bugs!”

\--

“It wasn’t bugged,” says Nott, then something clicks in her head. “Jester! I have an idea to make sure Yasha won’t kill me in my sleep!”

“Oh?” says Jester, leaning forward with an interested grin.

“I’ll give her a gift!” says Nott, slamming her fist down into a palm. “I’m gonna give her a gift so good that she wouldn’t bear to kill me!” Then she pauses and leans in closer, an idea popping into her head. “Quick,” she says, urgently, “I need your Rihanna concert tickets. I need them  _ right now _ .”

\--

“Name is Ratko. I don’t know anything,” the cashier growls. Literally growls, as gnolls aren’t particularly known for their enunciation. But more importantly, he’s being extremely shifty in the presence of two cops. Molly raises an eyebrow. 

“Okay,” he says. “Sure.”

Yasha holds up a picture. “You recognize this guy? Enon Brinjay?”

“No.”

Molly and Yasha glance at each other. “Maybe actually look at the picture, this time?” Molly prompts. 

“I don’t know him,” Ratko snaps. “I don’t know what happened. No more questions.”

“Well, how about I run a scenario past you,” Molly suggests, “and you tell me what you think?” He straightens up and cracks his knuckles dramatically. “You  _ do _ know Brinjay, he came in here and tried to sell you some hams. You knew they were worth a lot of gold, so you tried to steal them from him when he wasn’t home. Only, he  _ was _ home, so you shot him!” He grins sharply. “Does that sound familiar?” 

The gnoll growls a little. 

“Maybe some role play will jog your memory,” Molly says. He loves when he gets to do this. “Yasha? Great idea, right?”

Yasha makes eye contact with the gnoll and pops her gum. “Sure,” she agrees. “So, I’m Ratko.”

“Yes, obviously you’re the scary one.” Molly mimes opening a door with flourish. “Oh! I’m Enon Brinjay, owner of delicious and expensive ham. Don’t I know you from the  grocery store?”

Yasha points a finger gun at him. “Kill.”

“Aaaand scene!” Molly takes a bow.

Ratko throws a breadstick in his face and bolts. 

“Yasha, get the door!” Molly shouts, ducking a pack of gum thrown at his head.

“NYPD, everybody get down!” Yasha yells, and in the sudden pandemonium Ratko makes a break for the back door.

Molly yanks out his gun. “ _ I bet your stupid ham is expired! _ ” he shouts in Infernal.

The gnoll snarls back in his direction, and Molly almost gets a face full of artisanal cheese. He ducks around a shelf full of crackers and almost smacks into a doddering halfling woman.

“How are you still here?” he blurts out. She blinks at him and pushes her shopping cart insistently against his foot.

“Molly, he’s getting away!” Yasha calls. She starts towards him and almost trips over two half-elf children pelting out of the store and shrieking at the top of their lungs.

Molly vaults over the counter after their perp, coat flaring behind him. “Ratko!  _ Get back here, asshole! _ ” he shouts, throwing power behind the words.

Ratko stops, and begins to turn around—

And flings a pan of tepid grease right in Molly’s face. 

Molly yelps and flails at it instinctively, and it’s  _ disgustingly  _ and it  _ smells _ and it got in his  _ eyes _ —

“Molly, he’s—” 

There’s an almighty crash and Yasha’s voice goes quiet. “Oh. Hm.”

He wipes the unidentifiable meat grease from his eyes and blinks hazily. Yasha is standing over him, groceries scattered around her feet while the old woman yells at them in Halfling. 

“Well,” Molly says, “fuck.”

\--

“So, no,” says Molly, afterwards, dripping grease and other gross meat products onto the precinct floor. “I did not brief you, and yes, he did get away, but the good news is,” he brings the ice cream out from behind his back, “I bought some hazelnut ice cream afterwards just for you!”

Beau stares at him. Then she turns to Yasha, clearly looking for an explanation.

Yasha just sighs, and says, “Sorry.”

Beau lets out a long, slow breath, and says, her voice strained and beginning to rise, “God fucking  _ dammit _ , Tealeaf—”

\--

“—and now I’m in the fucking records room,” says Molly, in a sea of paperwork and boxes and god only knows what else is in here, along with Fjord and a very smug-looking Caleb, who’s stroking his familiar’s fur. Molly’s pretty sure he saw one of the Syphilis Guys duck in here with a bag full of weed one time. “I didn’t even  _ know  _ we still had a records room. Computers have been around since the 1990s at least, surely there’s no need for these.”

“1872, if you do not count Babbage’s Analytical Engine,” Caleb says.

“How do you  _ know  _ that,” Molly says, not really expecting an answer.

Fjord taps one of the nearly-full boxes, and says, “Think about it this way—at least you’re far away from any danger.”

“But I’ve got more arrests than anyone else in this precinct,” Molly huffs, setting a file down on the table. Okay, maybe he’s a little petulant, but he has a point, why can’t anyone see that? “It doesn’t make sense to put the best detective here on  _ grunt work _ . I could do more good out there than in here.”

“You’re the second-best detective here,” Caleb points out, and Molly shakes his head. “We are hardly short-handed on detectives, Mollymauk, you will be fine.”

“Beau’s a harsh person and she ain’t exactly easy to get along with, fine,” says Fjord, breaking in before Molly can tell Caleb that he’s actually the best one here, his arrest record says so, “but she’s one of the best cops I know. You know she was the one who caught Count Tylieri three years ago?”

“Wait,” says Molly, straightening up at the sound of the name. “Tylieri? The  _ Body Count Count _ ?”

\--

It’s a dark and stormy night. A man with a patchy beard and gaudy rings decorating his fingers, drags along a sobbing young man, gagged with his hands tied. He turns a corner and looks around, searching for anyone who might pass them by in this dark alleyway. No one’s here. Good.  _ Good _ . He shoves the young man up against the wall and hears the muffled pleas,  _ let me go please let me go I didn’t do anything I want to go home please _ —

“Shhhh,” Tylieri whispers. “Don’t move too much, or you’ll just make things messy.”

“Could say that for you,” says a low voice behind him, and Tylieri very slowly turns to see dark hair, blue eyes, a dark-skinned woman in NYPD blue, glaring him down from behind the barrel of a gun. “ _ Freeze _ , bitch. Put the fangs away and step away from the boy.”

\--

“Wow,” says Molly, whistling lowly. “I heard about that. I always figured the name was funny.”

“She’s very good at what she does,” says Fjord. “Listen to her.” And he steps out of the records room, leaving Caleb behind with Molly.

“It may be a bit difficult to win our bet while you have been, ah, what is the word, benched,” says Caleb, lightly, stroking his cat’s head and not quite smiling, “but I did take the liberty of going ahead with a new category while you are languishing here.” He shifts his hold on his cat so he can pull something out from his coat: a whiteboard, with Murderers We Let Go underlined at the very top. “You’re winning,” he says, placing it on Molly’s desk for the time being.

Sure enough, there’s a proud little  _ 1 _ under Molly’s name, right next to the even prouder  _ 0 _ under Caleb’s.

“Have fun with your files, Mollymauk,” says Caleb, still stroking his fucking cat like a fucking supervillain from a spy movie, and Molly could swear he’s almost floating off the ground as he walks out the room. Ugh, what an asshole. Molly stomps forward after him and slams the door shut, snarling after Caleb in Infernal.

Means to, anyway.

Instead it bangs onto a tower of boxes and slowly opens again.

“That was a  _ slam _ ,” Molly shouts after Caleb.

\--

Yasha isn’t very hard to find. All Nott has to do is wait for her motorcycle to come roaring into the precinct parking lot and spring her trap there.

“Yasha!” she exclaims, hopping off her bicycle. Technically it’s hers, the owner hasn’t come snooping around after it, and anyway it’s like Molly keeps saying: some people are very grumpy because they have too much stuff. It’s practically a civic duty of hers to relieve them of their shit, and the fact that she now has her very own bike is practically a side benefit. “Jester gave me her tickets to the Rihanna concert in two weeks—”

“I don’t like Rihanna,” says Yasha, kicking the stand of her motorcycle down.

“Oh,” says Nott, faintly.

“Molly does,” says Yasha. “You should ask him.”

“I absolutely will,” says Nott, because she knows where Molly is at the moment, he’s slaving away in the records room. “But, uh, I’m just curious, what do you like?”

Yasha’s eyebrows knit together as she looks down at Nott. She’s very big. She’s very, very big. Nott has never been more aware of just how big and muscled Yasha is until this very moment, and how small and scrawny Nott is in comparison to her. If she wanted to she could crush her—but then, that’s why Nott’s trying to get on her good side, so Yasha doesn’t crush her.

Damn it, she should’ve gotten flowers instead. Or just spared some from her flower crown for Caleb.

“Old movies,” Yasha finally offers. “Just not  _ Citizen Kane _ . It’s overrated.”

“Got it!” says Nott, relieved. “I’ll find a better classic movie than  _ Citizen Kane _ !” She scampers away, shooting a couple glances back at Yasha to make sure she’s not training her gun on her or anything. It can’t be that hard, anyway.  _ Citizen Kane _ ’s some boring old black and white movie, right? She’ll ask Caleb which movies are better, Caleb knows basically everything.

\--

Molly perks up when Beauregard knocks on the door to the file room. “Hey, Captain,” he says, trying to keep his rising glee out of his voice. 

“You found something?” Beauregard asks. Then, before he can answer, she points at him. “Hey, finally wearing a tie.”

Molly nods in resignation. He even did all of his shirt buttons up for this. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?” He brandished a folder at her. “Anyway, I think I’ve got something good here. Turns out the name ‘Ratko’ is made up, not surprising although it is disappointing that he doesn’t have a cooler name. But anyway, I was digging through these files -- one of which I  _ literally _ found in a spiderweb, by the way -- and it turns out there were a bunch of references to a Serbian thug. Street names are ‘the rat’ and ‘the butcher,’ and he’s known to hang out at a storage unit near Boerum Park,  _ which _ \--” Molly waved his file around, still trailing a spiderweb, “has red soil, hence the muddy red footprint on Morgenthau’s counter.”

Beau raises her eyebrows in the first non-judgemental look Molly has received from her. “That’s pretty fine work, Detective,” she allows. 

“Thank you very much, Captain. Testament to what can be achieved when you dress appropriately.” Poker face still firmly in place, Molly stands up in his full glory, button-up shirt tucked neatly into his patterned neon speedo. He holds his hand out to Beauregard. “Let’s pound it out, shall we?”

There’s something at the corner of Beauregard’s mouth that looks frighteningly like a smirk. Molly feels his confidence falter, just a bit. 

“You know what,” Beauregard drawls. There’s definitely a glimmer in her eyes. Horrifyingly, Molly thinks it’s a look he sees on Jester’s face once a week. “Such fine police work, let’s share it with the whole team, huh?” 

Molly puts his hands on his hips. He’s not afraid of her, the squad has seen him in worse.

“Fjord, Caleb, Nott, Yasha! Get in here! Bring Jester! And a camera!”

Molly’s heart sinks. Jester and a camera is not ideal. This is going to end up in Mona and Yuli’s scrapbook of Molly’s Wardrobe Fails, he just knows it. 

However. This is a challenge Molly has laid down, and the new Captain is picking it up, and Molly has to be a little impressed. 

Beauregard starts clapping as the squad comes into the room, and like the traitors they are, they all immediately take it up with her. “The fine master Detective, Mollymauk Tealeaf,” Beauregard announces. 

Molly takes a bow.

\--

It’s while they’re heading out that Nott catches Molly by his sleeve and says, “So—”

“I don’t regret it even if it’ll probably end up in a scrapbook ten years from now,” says Molly, almost immediately.

Nott shakes her head and says, “That’s not what I was going to ask. I wanted to know, what’s Yasha’s favorite old movie? And don’t say  _ Citizen Kane _ , because she said that one sucked.”

“...I honestly have no idea,” says Molly, after a moment as he tugs his hand out of her grip, unbuttoning his shirt and letting out a relieved breath. “Gods, that feels better. She likes  _ Lord of the Rings _ . That’s old, right? It’s older than I am, it’s ten years old by now, it must count as old.”

“It’s not  _ black and white _ ,” Nott says. “I need a movie that’s so old Technicolor hasn’t even been invented yet!”

“And you’re asking me?” says Molly, incredulously. “I’m flattered, Nott, well and truly flattered, but I’m afraid this is something I have absolutely no idea about. The oldest movie I ever saw was  _ Star Wars _ .” He waves a hand to the squad forming up outside the precinct and says, “Can I go now?”

“That’s just useless,” huffs Nott. Then: “And yes. But I’m calling shotgun with Yasha!”

“You’re not just doing this because you think it’ll keep her from killing you, right?” says Molly. “Because she does actually like you.”

“She’s a  _ Xhorhasian spy _ ,” says Nott.

Molly rolls his eyes. Nott knows this because he straightens up, shakes his head, and looks up at the ceiling for a second before looking back down at her. “I think you cracked it,” he says, dryly, “I think you found the reason why she took that job at the circus.”

“Knew it!” Nott shrieks, as Molly turns on his heel and walks away. Something sparkly and neon-purple peeks out from under his jeans, before she sees him yanking them up. “And wear a belt!” she calls after him.

\--

“There is no record of Ratko on the ledger, and no sign of him where Frumpkin could see,” says Caleb, snapping back into his own body out of Frumpkin’s as Beau parks them just outside a warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn. It’s fairly old and dilapidated, a vacant lot on one side and a condemned warehouse on another, and Caleb half-wants to shake this Ratko for picking such a terrible place as a hideout. One of these days, there is going to be a criminal whose hideout is OSHA-compliant, and Caleb will weep with joy on that day. “He must’ve used cash,” he says.

“Well,” says Molly, ruining Caleb’s fantasies of railings, bright red danger signs and accessible fire escapes, “I, for one, am excited to be on a stakeout with you.  _ Captain _ .” He smiles at Beau, the way he usually smiles when he’s trying his hardest to annoy someone. Caleb should know, he’s had that aimed at him quite a lot. “Do you know what my favorite thing about stakeouts is? Patrol guide says no dress code.”

Molly read the patrol guide?  _ Molly _ ? Something warm blooms in Caleb’s gut, something wholly unfamiliar to Caleb. (One day he’ll look back, and he’ll be able to name it for what it is: pride in Molly for reading an actual book.)

“So I can wear this,” Molly continues, gesturing to his half-open shirt and his beloved coat, “and hang out with my two best friends—”

“Does he always talk this much?” says Beau, cutting into Molly’s next big fat lie.

“ _ Ja _ ,” says Caleb, with a sigh. “You learn to tune the chatter out. At some point it’s like having a white noise machine.”

“First of all, Caleb, that’s rude, my chatter is a delight,” says Molly. “Secondly, Captain, Fjord said you caught Count Tylieri.  _ Tylieri _ . I saw the news, I followed the trial, he was a piece of work.”

“Understatement of the year,” says Beau. “The guy was an evil little shithead.”

“What I don’t understand is,” says Molly, “you should’ve been commended for that. You should’ve gotten the position much, much sooner. But I didn’t hear anything about you, and it’s been three whole years since Tylieri was arrested. So what happened?”

“Homophobia happened,” says Beau, and Caleb sits up straight, pieces sliding into place in his head. “I didn’t get shit because I’m gay.”

“... _ was _ .”

“What.”

“I’m surprised neither of you figured it out,” says Beau. “It’s not like I try to hide it.”

Caleb looks back on his memory, and it all seems so obvious in retrospect: the pride flag on Beau’s desk, the way she looked at Molly and said  _ manscaping _ , Jester’s rock-solid certainty when she’d lowered her phone and said  _ guys, I’m getting lots of lesbian vibes off the new captain _ . “Oh,” he says, faintly.

“We suck at being detectives,” says Molly, like he’s reevaluating his entire life. “Especially queer detectives.”

Beau turns, squints, and says, “What?”

“Well, you see, Captain, it all started when I was growing up in the circus, and back then I wasn’t quite so purple,” says Molly, clearly about to tell the completely false story about why he’s so purple and flamboyant. Caleb races through the hypothetical scenario of letting him talk in his head, and snaps Frumpkin back into his lap. This is going to be—actually, fairly easy. Beau is queer too, the danger is significantly reduced, and besides, he’s been out a while.

“I’m gay,” he says, “Molly is bisexual. Neither of us try to hide it.”

“And genderfluid, Caleb, don’t forget that,” says Molly, with a distinctly annoyed huff. “You can use whatever pronouns you want, though, I don’t mind.”

“Aw, fuck,” says Beau, like the light of realization has just dawned on her, too. “I had  _ no idea _ about the gender part. Or Caleb.” She pauses, then repeats, “Aw,  _ fuck _ .”

Molly, very cheerfully, says, “Welcome to the terrible detective club! Caleb’s the president.”

“ _ Nein _ ,” says Caleb, horrified.

\--

On the other side of the warehouse, Yasha climbs back into the car, holds out tickets, and says, “Here.”

Nott, her eyes glowing an eerie yellow in the light, snatches the tickets from her, frowns, and says, “What are these? What’s this—Brooklyn Underground Film Festival?”

“It’s a film festival,” says Yasha. “It shows old movies, sometimes.” She licks her lips and says, “You—seemed pretty intent on seeing old movies with me. And my girlfriend’s not the biggest fan, and neither is Molly, so I figured I could. Um. Ask you to come with me.”

“You want me,” says Nott, slowly, “to watch a really old movie with you.”

Has she misread this? It wouldn’t be the first time. Yasha fidgets, a little, wishing Molly’d decided to go with her after all, not with Caleb and Beau. She could use his light cheer right now, his easy way of filling the air so she doesn’t fall awkwardly silent. “Yes, that is what I want,” she says. “If you don’t mind.”

“You like my company?” Nott asks.

“Well, yes,” says Yasha. “You’re very small and skittish, but. Um. I do like your company. You’re very nice, when you’re not brandishing a dagger.”

“Oh,” says Nott. In the darkness, Yasha fancies she can see her smile, small and soft. “Well. Okay. I’ll come with you. Someone does need to keep an eye on y—uh, things.”

\--

“When did you come out?” Molly asks. Caleb can hear the muffled  _ thump _ of his tail hitting the back seats, likely twitching the way it does when he gets overly curious. 

“Like fifteen years ago,” Beau replies, settling down in her seat. She folds her arms across her chest. “I was out from the time I joined the Police Academy, never went back in the closet for anything. Made it a hell of a lot harder to get where I am, but hey, nobody’s ever said about me that I don’t like fighting people. After the Count Tylieri thing, I got noticed. The old guard was dying out, suddenly it was cool to have a highly ranking lesbian cop, and I made Captain.”

She snorts. “They put me in a goddamn public affairs unit.”

From the backseat, Molly makes a strangled coughing sound. 

Beau shrugs. “Yeah. It went about that well. I helped recruitment some, but I was a damn sight far from being the good soldier they wanted in there. But I did my job, and I didn’t let them forget about me, and now I finally have my own command. And I’m  _ not _ gonna screw it up.”

Caleb doesn’t know what to say to that. He looks down at Frumpkin, runs his hands through the familiar’s soft fur, and  pushes any thoughts about his own advancement, his old precinct, back into their box in a dark corner of his mind.

Molly leans forward in between the seats. His ostentatious jewelry catches the light out of the corner of Caleb’s eye. “Alright, I’m sorry, Captain,” he says, to Caleb’s surprise. “I admit I kind of feel like a jackass.”

Caleb opens his mouth to tell Molly he’s  _ definitely  _ a jackass, but then Molly cuts him off. “On the flip side, there’s Ratko,” he says smugly. “Humility over, I’m amazing!”

Caleb sighs and looks down at Frumpkin. “It was nice while it lasted, hm?” he mutters to the cat.

Frumpkin meows, in answer.

\--

Molly kicks the door down, running the edge of one of his swords over the back of his neck. Ice crystallizes along the blade, turning it sharp and keen. He drags the edge of the other sword lightly down his collarbone, and that one glows dimly white in the dark warehouse.

“You have a gun,” says Caleb, stepping inside with his sidearm out. “Use it.”

“Why would I when I have swords  _ and  _ no children around who’ll start crying when I cut myself open?” Molly says, as Beau falls in beside him, her own gun out and a flashlight in her other hand. He follows in her lead, Caleb just behind him, and gives a dismayed huff when they make a left turn. “There’s, what, three thousand identical blue doors here?” he says, staring down a hallway of storage doors.

“Guess we all have door duty,” says Beau.

“Did you make a  _ joke _ ,” says Molly, with a grin. “I didn’t know you knew how to make jokes! I just thought you were incredibly unpleasant.”

“And I still think you’re obnoxious,” says Beau. “Come on.” She steps forward into an intersection, Molly just a beat behind her, and the two of them point their weapons down opposite directions. “Clear,” says Beau.

“Clear,” says Molly, holding his glowing sword at the ready. He glances back at Beau, sees the steel in her spine and her eyes. “I’ll take this side?” he asks.

“Yeah,” says Beau. “I’ll take Caleb and we’ll get this side.” With that, she nudges Caleb, and the two of them make their way down the corridor on the left. Molly watches them for a few moments, then turns back to his corridor and starts to make his way down, quiet as a mouse. If only Ratko was undead, he’d have tracked him well enough, but—well, that always gives him a pretty bad headache.

He stops in his tracks and steps gingerly over a dead rat. He very much hopes Caleb and Beau are having a better go than he is.

\--

“You,” Caleb whispers to the maintenance man, who’s staring at him and Beau and their NYPD vests and their guns with the most unimpressed look, “are unbelievable.  _ Unbelievable _ .”

The maintenance man just rolls his eyes, and raises one finger at the both of them, mouthing, _ fuck you _ . Music pounds faintly out from his headphones. How the fuck is he not deaf?

“Yeah, fuck you too, dick,” Beau grumbles behind him.

Frumpkin gives a little angry hiss at the maintenance man, and deftly dodges the kick the man aims at him. Then he scampers off down the corridor, to join his wizard once more.

\--

They probably are, Molly decides, making his way down the corridor. It’s weird, but he feels like he’s been here before—oh, right, that drug raid had been two weeks ago, in this same warehouse. He’d forgotten about that.  _ Goldfish memory strikes again _ , he almost jokingly says, but Yasha’s not there and neither is Caleb. It’s just him, his swords, and Ratko. Wherever the fuck Ratko is.

He glances down at the nearest blue door’s lock—

Oh. There’s no lock.

_ There’s no lock _ .

“Gotcha,” Molly whispers. He sheathes the glowing sword and grabs the handle of the door, lifts as hard as he can. With a grunt of effort, the door goes up, and Ratko is—

Ratko’s pointing a gun at him, lips pulled back to expose sharp, sharp teeth. Right. Gnoll.

“Good to see you too,” says Molly, staring more at the teeth than the gun. In his defense, they’re very sharp, and Ratko’s eyeing his neck like he’d love to tear it out. “There’s a dish rack you forgot to call back, by the way. Rude of you to treat a girl like that.”

“Can’t stop me,” the gnoll snarls, his voice a low growl. “I’m  _ going _ .”

“You’re going nowhere,” says Molly. “You see, if you look to your left, you’ll see Detectives Yasha Nydoorin and Nott the Brave.” He nods, and Yasha gives him a curt nod, her own giant sword held ready. Nott is perched on top of her shoulders, crossbow pointed where Molly’s sure it’ll hurt Ratko the most.

“And if you look to your right,” Molly continues, “you’ll see Detective Caleb Widogast.” He nods to Caleb, whose cat is crouched low at his feet, snarling. “And Frumpkin.”

Frumpkin hisses, ready to pounce.

“And if you look behind you,” Molly goes on, “that’s Captain Beauregard Lionett.”

Beau steps out of the shadows, her own gun held ready and trained on Ratko. Steel in her eyes, steel in her spine. Unpleasant she might be, but Molly can respect someone who clawed her way up from the bottom, defined her own path, the same way he did. Even if she’s also an asshole in many other aspects.

“The point is,” says Molly, “my team has you surrounded.”

Then he pauses. Team, team uniforms, uniforms, police dress code—

“Beau!” he yells. “I figured it out!”

“ _ What _ ?” Beau yells back.

“The ties!” Molly shouts. “They’re a team uniform! You were kept off the team, and now you’re coaching the team, so you want us to be a cohesive unit! Hence the ties!”

“...team?” says Ratko.

“Shut up, Ratko,” says Molly.

“Great fucking solve there, Detective, got it in one, now save crowing about it for later!” Beau shouts back. “We’re in the middle of arresting someone here!”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Molly, pointing his frozen-sharp sword at Ratko, who’s now holding his paws up, staring at the team of police officers cutting him off from all the paths he can see. “Ratko, you’re under arrest for murder. Put the weapon down, come quietly, and  _ maybe _ I’ll let you write the dish rack you had sex with.”

Ratko, very slowly, lowers the gun.

Then he tackles Molly to the ground, furiously slashing at him, trying to bite at his neck. Molly kicks angrily, ineffectually, his arm now pinned down, and oh god is that  _ drool _ ? Gross, and also, oh, fuck, he doesn’t want to die here, not to some gnoll, not while he’s still two cases ahead of Caleb in their bet—

A ray of bright fire knocks Ratko off of Molly, and after that it’s just Yasha and Nott piling on the gnoll, with Yasha hauling out the cuffs and reciting the Miranda rights. Molly staggers to his feet, wiping the drool off his face as Caleb rushes up to him. His hand is—warm. Very warm, when he helps Molly up to his feet. Must be the fire magic he cast, earlier.

“Oh,” says Caleb, relieved, “ _Gut_ , you’re all right.”

“Aw, were you worried about me, Mr. Caleb?” Molly says, with a grin. “I’m flattered, well and truly.”

Caleb coughs, and says, “I was worried for our bet. I cannot collect my winnings from a dead man.”

“I’ll leave you my car in my will if that’s what you’re so worried about,” Molly promises, patting him on the back. “Now—you should probably talk Nott out of frisking the guy for his money and keeping it all for herself.”

“Oh, not again,” Caleb sighs, and joins Nott and Yasha in arresting their perp. Molly sheathes his sword once more, glancing sideways at Beau when she steps closer to his side.

“Good work, Detective,” she says. “On this case and the solve earlier. Took you long enough.”

“That’s how we do it in the Mighty Nein-Nine, Captain,” says Molly, “catch bad guys and look good doing it.” He pauses, then adds, “And it’s Molly.”

“What?”

“You’re on first-name terms with everyone else already, don’t think I didn’t notice,” says Molly. “Just call me Molly.”

“All right,” says Beau. “Obnoxious one.”

“God, you’re unpleasant, just let me be nice to you,” Molly says, fidgeting a little. Oh. Oh, no. Maybe if he adjusts the speedo slightly it won’t feel like it’s slowly creeping into him.

Beau squints at him, and says, “Something wrong, Molly?”

“I never took the speedo off,” he admits. “It was just one thing after another and I completely forgot to swap it for something less tight, and—ah, fuck, I think it’s  _ inside _ me now.”

“We did not need to know that!” yells Caleb.

“You’re the worst,” Beau says. “Also, gross, I didn’t need that mental image in my life,  _ ever _ .”

“How do you think I feel?” Molly huffs.

“ _ I don’t wanna fucking know _ .”


End file.
